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Anarchism in East Germany (1945-1955)

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Anarchism in East Germany (1945-1955) ANARCHISM IN EAST GERMANY (1945-1955) When speaking of the anarchist movement in West Germany (FRG) or East Germany (GDR) in the post-war years we would do well to remember that anarchism was outlawed from 1933 to 1945: members of anarchist groups were arrested, murdered or sentenced to the lingering death of the concentration camp; the anarchist press vanished, and books and pamphlets were burned. So – for the few who survived – in 1945 anarchists had to begin all over again from zero and it was not long before authoritarian rule was established in East Germany and it employed the same methods vis à vis anarchists as the Nazi regime had. Between the 1890s and 1933, German anarchism had been split into a variety of strands which, with the odd exception, never managed to come together in an organisation based on a few basic principles to which all anarchists subscribed. Let us briefly outline the nature of those strands. 1. INDIVIDUALIST ANARCHISM; Inspired by [Max] Stirner, this spread thanks to the writings of John-Henry MacKay (the philosopher-poet who ‘rediscovered’ Stirner and his work) and [Benjamin] Tucker. Individualist anarchist associations, Friends of Stirner and associations in favour of individualist culture were around in the 1920s, especially in Berlin and Hamburg. At present, the John McKay Society publishes the works of MacKay, Tucker, etc., as well as a series of anarchist studies that step outside the individualist framework proper. 2. LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM: Its spokesman was [Gustav] Landauer: anti-Marx and their heir to Proudhon, Landauer inspired the action of groups belonging to the Socialist Union, in order to create, outside of the parameters of state and capitalism, free communities of producers, the primary cells of a libertarian society. Landauer’s influence prior to 1914 made itself felt in Austria, Switzerland and even in France. In Israel, the construction of the kibbutzim drew inspiration from Landauer’s ideas. 3. ANARCHO-COMMUNISM (or indeed libertarian communism): linked to the name of Johann Most (d. 1906) and drawing some inspiration from Bakunin and a lot from Kropotkin. [Erich] Mühsam was to pick up where Most left off and, at the time of the revolution in Munich in 1918, he set up the Union of Revolutionary Internationalists, and, ten years after that, the Anarchist Union, which was in competition with the Federation of Anarcho-Communists founded by [Rudolf] Oestreich. These two organisations vied with each other during the Weimar Republic and battled the rising tide of national-socialism, using different tactics. 4. ANARCHO-SYNDICALISM: In a backlash against class collaborationist trade union and deference to the state, the anarcho-syndicalists launched the Union of Free Workers of Germany (FAUD) in 1919 and under the guidance of [Rudolf] Rocker, [Augustin] Souchy and [Arthur] Lehning, it grew into a mass organisation with about 125,000 members by 1923. The FAUD lost influence very quickly however and by 1933 its membership had fallen to between 25,000 and 30,000. 5. “ANARCHIST” LIBERALISM: At the turn of the 20th century, [Silvio] Gesell had tried to amalgamate economic liberalism and anarchism. After 1919, this movement was to spread under the influence of Zimmermann; it opposed authoritarian socialism and violent anarchism and strove – under the designation of “a-cracy” – to devise a synthesis of economic liberalism and individualist anarchism. This current of thought was to fall victim – as we shall see anon – to totalitarian rule in East Germany. By laying the stress of what divided them instead of what united them, the anarchists failed to arrive at a fraternal coordination of the various strands of anarchist thinking. There was, though, for a brief moment, a point at which all the strands worked together: during the first, short-lived councils Republic in Bavaria in 1919, before the communist seizure of power, swiftly followed by the dictatorship of the soldiery. Gesell, Landauer and Mühsam and the anarcho- syndicalists featured side by side on the Bavarian Council Republic. Proof that necessity over- ruled factional squabbles, but such unity between anarchists was short-lived. Up until 1933, Hamburg had been a centre of anarchist activity; a strong FAUD chapter, several anarchist or semi-anarchist newspapers and, among the latter The Unionist, the mouthpiece of the Workers’ General Union umbrella organisation. Another paper, the Proletarischer Zeitgeist, published out of Zwickau (Saxony) from 22 March 1933 on – was anti-authoritarian and close to the anarchists. It was distributed by Otto Reimers, then supported by Otto Rühle who turned up to launch the Anti-Authoritarian Revolutionaries’ Bloc which laid on series of talks in Hamburg that attracted a substantial audience (Rocker spelled out the main arguments of his book Nationalism and Culture there). In 1945 it was surviving members of this group that were the first to revive anarchism: there were only four of them, one being Reimers. Even before the announcement that Hitler was dead, Reimers was distributing leaflets denouncing the atrocities in the Buchenwald and Belsen concentration camps and calling for vengeance. From 4 May 1945 onwards, Reimers was addressing what Hamburg communists there were who had evaded the Nazi dictatorship: given the tragic circumstances of the labour movement, he called for the creation of a united revolutionary movement encompassing social democrats, communists and anarchists, a movement both anti-fascist and anti-capitalist. This rapprochement, which the communist leadership opposed, never came to fruition, despite Reimers’s efforts. Only in March 1947 did the British occupation authorities authorise the establishment of the “Cultural Federation” for which Reimers and another pre-war anarchist activist, Langer, had been lobbying. That organisation adopted the title of the “Cultural Federation of Free, Anti-militarist Socialists”. The Federation had its own premises, distributed 11 printed circulars during 1947, established links with five cities and kept up correspondence with comrades in 17 countries. But what was going on during those two tough years in the Russian-occupied zone? Could the anarchist movement bounce back in that part of Germany under Russian military and stalinist police control? Zwickau is an industrial city in Saxony, not far from Chemnitz and the border with Czechoslovakia; steel plants, textile mills and coalmines abound in the area. Zwickau was the place from which Proletarischer Zeitgeist – the organ of the Workers’ General Union published. In May 1945, there were only 6 surviving members of the Union left in Zwickau: 27 members had succumbed to the Gestapo. One of the survivors, Willi Jelinek, had managed to hold on to the Proletarischer Zeitgeist’s subscriber list and to the most reliable names on the list he sent out detailed letters with an eye to reviving the organisation. As the Russian authorities were busy arranging an amalgamation of SPD and KPD members into a new Unified Socialist Party (SED) which was only a cover for the Communist Party, Jelinek denounced this ploy: “The Communist Party plays the part of the fox, eager to assuage the hare’s fear by pretending to have turned vegetarian”. In another letter sent out to anarchists (February 1946) Jelinek spoke out against any anarchist participation in a socialist-communist bloc and on this score, he espoused a different tack from Reimers up in Hamburg. He reckoned – and he reckoned wrongly – that any SPD-KPD union would be short-lived and that then the anarchists would come into their own. Hence the need for anarchists to get themselves organised. In June 1946, the Zwickau circle, boosted by former Proletarischer Zeitgeist readers and syndicalists, was up and running and issuing information circulars to anarchists in the Russian zone (the SBZ) and in West Germany. In Saxony, 5 or 6 groups were formed and the same was true in Thuringia. Jelinek was in touch with the Hamburg anarchists, anarchists in Mulheim (in the Ruhr), Kiel and so on. In the factory where he worked, Jelinek had been elected to chair the factory council by 95% of the workforce and he joined the Russian zone’s FDGB union grouping as a way of extending his reach. The communists, who had known Jelinek for a long time, had reckoned that his thinking had altered. Right from the earliest factory council meetings, they were disabused of that idea and turned on Jelinek. Once the unified SED party was founded, the communists called upon Jelinek to step down from the chairman’s position; he refused, and after that he became a target. The Zwickau circle set up an “Information Office” and sent out circulars setting out the insurmountable practical difficulties in the Russian zone: launching a lawful anarchist organisation, publishing a newspaper, using a copier. But it decided to carry on with its activities in spite of the ever-increasing material difficulties. It rejected the idea of “retrieving” the ex-anarchists who had joined the SED: the important thing was to recruit fresh comrades to anti-authoritarian thinking. In September 1947, the circle was forced to admit that the younger generation was not in much of a hurry to swell its ranks and it was short of publications to distribute. The priority was addressing the workers and showing them how the SED communists had misrepresented Marxism (Jelinek was perfectly conversant with Marxist literature). In late 1947 Jelinek was working on a pamphlet which never saw publication: in it, he denounced the dictatorship of the proletariat “which meant the authority of the leaders. Wherever there is obedience, there are leaders giving the orders”. Any dictatorship meant government by minority. We can guess at the distribution of circulars and letters was becoming more and more difficult. Policemen and informers were watching Jelinek; as a precaution against his arrest, Jelinek had forwarded his list of former Zeitgeist subscribers to his comrade Willy Huppertz (in Mulheim).
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